As Highlands celebrates the 150th anniversary of its founding it’s interesting to look back at the history of its formation.
Many are familiar with the tale of town founders Samuel Kelsey and Clinton Hutchinson connecting hypothetical lines between major cities of the day and proposing Highlands as a connecting commercial hub, but less known is Kelsey’s attraction to the area for its botanical possibilities.
Samuel Kelsey’s first foray into horticulture was as a young man when he and his brother successfully ran a nursery on the family homestead in New York. He then moved to Illinois, where he ran a commercial nursery for a decade.
In the 1860s he was a professor at Ottawa University in Kansas and a consulting forester for the Santa Fe Railroad, conducting large scale experimental tree plantings in the hot Kansas prairie. Kelsey’s expertise was evidenced as one of the founders of the Kansas State Horticultural Society. In the early 1870s he helped co-found Hutchinson, Kansas, with Clinton Hutchinson, after which they turned their eyes toward the east.
Scientist and apple farmer Silas McDowell of Franklin coined the term “thermal belt” in 1858, which he described as a temperate zone on a mountain in which frost and freezing temperatures were less likely to occur. Some of his numerous articles, including his “Theory of the Thermal Zone” published in 1861, were read by Kelsey in Kansas, who saw in Western North Carolina the opportunity to not only found another town, but also pursue his horticultural passions. Kelsey’s journal entries from Highlands early years detail trips to neighboring farmers to obtain apple scions for grafting or meeting with Silas McDowell to discuss fruit cultivation.
Hutchinson soon sold his interest to Kelsey and returned to Kansas, leaving Kelsey to market the venture alone. It is insightful that Kelsy’s first promotional brochure in 1876 prominently touted that the Blue Ridge Highlands offered “superior fruit, farming, and grazing lands.” It would be more than a decade before the second brochure in 1887 would instead call Highlands “the greatest health and pleasure resort in the United States.”
So, it seems that Kelsey came to realize there was more profit in real estate than in apples. But he did form the Kelsey Highlands Nursery, later involving his son Harlan, which became known as one of the first nurseries advocating the use of native plants.
HCLT is proud to conserve the incredible biodiversity that first attracted Samuel Kelsey, and so many since, to the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau.
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